[Stealth]

can you afford to pay the $6k+ it must've cost to build that thing?

[MatthewPapa]

Your computer is good.....almost as good as mine

For one time in my life i decided to go all out on a computer.

AMD X2 4400+ @ 2.72 Ghz, 233 Bus speed 2k HT
2 GB PC 5400 RAM
BFG GeForce 7800GT @ 633 mhz, 256 mb
DFI board, SLI-D UT
Antec 680w PSU
2x RAID 5 120 gb hdd

These are my optimal settings on stock frequencies. The 4400+ cooler is one of the best I have ever used, and its only stock!

BTW dont get the XFX 7800, yes it is cheaper but you get what you pay for. Read all the reviews and compare the benchmarks. You will see what I mean. I would get BFG, ASUS, or LEdtek.

[Flipside]

LOL The total cost for 'The Beast' is over $10K! That's......insane!

I'm pretty sure the Hiigarans wouldn't pay that

[CP5670]

Nice system up there. But who the heck would buy a 19" LCD for a GTX SLI setup? (you can only use one of them in SLI mode) Screw that and add in the JVC 2048x1536 projector for $225000 instead. And just to get the price up some more, get four Opteron 854s, a board like this and 32GB of memory. This is supposed to be extreme after all, right?

and wow, whadaya know, the 150 opteron is $800+ retail  ...   and it has 3 hypertransport channels, whereas my motherboard only takes advantage of one.

Guess there really is a reason why AMD says the 64FX is a true gamers PC... don't think they'd lie to the public, when they could just package an overclocked Opteron 148 and call it the "gamers CPU"... wouldn't hurt them any, in fact they could charge more for it than the 64FX they call the "gamers CPU" at the moment.  i think i'm going to go with what they suggest for gamers, and get the 64FX, or maybe the 64FX X2, depending on my funds.

plus overclocking voids the processor warranty, and most other parts in the computer

plus in the grand scheme of things, nowadays, it's not all about "Mhz" anymore.

^^^^^ all this after biting the bullet and talking to my comp sci major friend

You're looking at the 8-way multiprocessor capable 850, not the 150. The 939 150 is about $350 (only one active hypertransport channel), the same price as the identical 4000. And of course they would "lie" to the public. They are there to make money, after all.

The only thing the FXs have over all the other AMD64 processors is that their multipliers are fully unlocked, which is much less useful than it used to be with older processors.

The warranty is valuable to some people, but it's very hard to screw up something if you work up slowly and do all the relevant research in advance, and if you get a cheap processor then it won't cost you much to replace it anyway. You are right though, the CPU speed makes very little difference in modern games (at normal settings and taking minimum framerates into account), where the video card is king. I'm actually more interested in Mathematica and emulators, which will get a big performance boost over my existing CPU.

BTW dont get the XFX 7800, yes it is cheaper but you get what you pay for. Read all the reviews and compare the benchmarks. You will see what I mean. I would get BFG, ASUS, or LEdtek.

XFX is supposed to have gotten much better with quality control since their 7800 cards. They are one of the companies that make a 490/1300 version. BFG is overrated in my experience (I have a BFG card), solid but nothing special, but eVGA's support and warranty is now the best in the business from what I'm hearing.

[Stealth]

You're looking at the 8-way multiprocessor capable 850, not the 150. The 939 150 is about $350 (only one active hypertransport channel), the same price as the identical 4000.
are you sure about that?  to my knowledge one of the key features (unless it's changed recently) of opteron 100 series processors were their 3 hypertransport channels

And of course they would "lie" to the public. They are there to make money, after all.
you're missing my point.  why would they lie to the public and say the 64FX is the most powerful gaming processor when it's not.  they could JUST as easily bump the price on the opteron 1xxs, and sell overclocked models of THEM as the "gamers CPU".  not a matter of "they can make more money from the 64FX".  only reason they're making so much money out of it is because it's been advertised to be so awesome for gaming.  if the opteron is so OBVIOUSLY the better gaming processor, why wouldn't they market that as the optimal processor for gaming.  because it's not.

The only thing the FXs have over all the other AMD64 processors is that their multipliers are fully unlocked, which is much less useful than it used to be with older processors.
therefore making overclocking much more flexible/easy than the opteron

The warranty is valuable to some people, but it's very hard to screw up something if you work up slowly and do all the relevant research in advance, and if you get a cheap processor then it won't cost you much to replace it anyway.
or you could buy a processor that's designed to fly, and not have to risk breaking something by saving $200 and overclocking a processor, risking damaging your computer, and going through all that trouble... and still outperform the opteron in a desktop environment

 You are right though, the CPU speed makes very little difference in modern games (at normal settings and taking minimum framerates into account), where the video card is king. I'm actually more interested in Mathematica and emulators, which will get a big performance boost over my existing CPU.
yeah.  the things people will say nowadays.  about buying cheaper processors, so they can clock it from 2.0 GHZ, to 2.6 GHZ.  that may have been more impressive 5 years ago, but now it's really not as much :-/

64FX it is.  possibly even X2 if i can find it.  or opteron........ if i can find a high end 100 series for less than i'd pay for my 64FX.

[phatosealpha]

Wow.  19 inch LCDs powering a 10k system.  Whoever wrote that article is a moron.

[CP5670]

are you sure about that?  to my knowledge one of the key features (unless it's changed recently) of opteron 100 series processors were their 3 hypertransport channels

See this table. "Coherent" means enabled here (all of them have three built-in links but AMD factory-disables some of them). The new 939 Opterons are not in that list yet, but they are basically 0/0.

you're missing my point.  why would they lie to the public and say the 64FX is the most powerful gaming processor when it's not.  they could JUST as easily bump the price on the opteron 1xxs, and sell overclocked models of THEM as the "gamers CPU".  not a matter of "they can make more money from the 64FX".  only reason they're making so much money out of it is because it's been advertised to be so awesome for gaming.  if the opteron is so OBVIOUSLY the better gaming processor, why wouldn't they market that as the optimal processor for gaming.  because it's not.

You could say that's exactly what they are doing with the FXs, just selling their best Opterons as those. The Opteron isn't "obviously" the better gaming processor; they are completely identical aside from the overclocking, just marketed for different kinds of buyers. The FX57 is the best gaming processor, but so is the (identical) Opteron 154.

To tell you the truth, the FXs are all bad deals unless you have some extreme cooling setup. Even if you aren't going to overclock, you wouldn't see any real benefits in actual usage over, say, a normal A64 3800 or 4000, unless you use certain specialized programs a lot. I do, but I don't want to pay for an FX, so I overclock.

therefore making overclocking much more flexible/easy than the opteron

Not really, A64 overclocking is somewhat different from that of other processors. Memory dividers have no performance hit and most A64 motherboards can hit at least 260mhz HT and support asychronous bus frequencies, so the multiplier adjustments have become pretty much redundant. They're convenient, but not worth paying extra for.

or you could buy a processor that's designed to fly, and not have to risk breaking something by saving $200 and overclocking a processor, risking damaging your computer, and going through all that trouble... and still outperform the opteron in a desktop environment

I can understand wanting to avoid the hassle and time it takes to overclock (although if there is any significant "risk" you are doing something wrong), but I personally would rather have the $900 difference in my pocket and get better speeds in the end.

[Nix]

I'm real behind in this discussion but I want to point out one thing you said about your PSU.  You know and trust the guy who's selling you the psu.  One thing I've learned the hard way from purchasing my own components is a single simple rule.  Two actually.

Functionality over Form, at all times.
and
Don't Trust.  Research.

I trusted a friend who ran a computer store here, bought a defective optical drive from him.  MSI drives are garbage, total garbage, though he said they were pretty good.  I also trusted him on MSI for other things as well, like a new socket 754 MSI motherboard.  Turns out that motherboard went through eight (not exaggerating) EIGHT BIOS revisions and STILL had major bugs that were being worked on. Luckily, I didnt buy the board from the guy I trusted.  then I got the Asus K8V SE DLX and I've had zero problems.  After researching, that is.

[Descenterace]

If you are paying less than £50 ($80?) for a power supply 'rated at 480W', you are about to suffer disappointment. Don't look at the power rating; look at the maximum current it can deliver (that's sustained current, not peak current) on each rail. Anything less than 30A on the positive 12V rail is too weak for a gaming system.

Good 480W supplies are very expensive. A $20 PSU will not run a gaming machine for long and despite the rating the manufacturer gives it is probably closer to 250W.

To be honest, although 480W is often sufficient for a modern computer, I'd be inclined to go looking for a good solid 550W or higher PSU. The more overspec it is the longer it will last and the less likely it is to burn out randomly.

[Setekh]

I can't remember the last time I pored over technical stats like this. So long as it plays SCP...

[Descenterace]

Funniest thing is, I just looked up the spec of that '600W' power supply:

-> Power Specifications:
- +3.3V ~ 28A
- + 5V ~ 38A
- + 12V ~ 17A
- -5V ~ 0.5A
- -12V ~ 0.8A
- +5Vsb ~ 2A

THAT IS NOT A 600W SUPPLY. That spec would disgrace my webserver's 300W cheapo PSU! I would be very surprised if an AMD FX-based system even boots off that PSU.

Bloody hell... even EBuyer's budget 'Gold PSU' pieces of crap pump more amps than that.

[edit] OK, so technically it is a 600W supply, but that's only because they've boosted the output of the 5V rail. Thing is, anything above approx. 20A is fine for the 5V; it's the 12V which is important for anything newer than a Pentium 2. [/edit]

Coming soon to a website-owned-by-a-bored-student near you: destruct-testing of an EBuyer superpricecheapo 600000000000W PSU (weight: 250g)...

[Stealth]

I can understand wanting to avoid the hassle and time it takes to overclock (although if there is any significant "risk" you are doing something wrong), but I personally would rather have the $900 difference in my pocket and get better speeds in the end.

$900 difference?  the opterons and their 64fx counterparts are almost identical in price.  64FX 57 = slightly over $1000.  opteron 154 = slightly over $1000.

still not a believe in clocking for daily use.

[Stealth]

Funniest thing is, I just looked up the spec of that '600W' power supply:

-> Power Specifications:
- +3.3V ~ 28A
- + 5V ~ 38A
- + 12V ~ 17A
- -5V ~ 0.5A
- -12V ~ 0.8A
- +5Vsb ~ 2A

THAT IS NOT A 600W SUPPLY. That spec would disgrace my webserver's 300W cheapo PSU! I would be very surprised if an AMD FX-based system even boots off that PSU.

Bloody hell... even EBuyer's budget 'Gold PSU' pieces of crap pump more amps than that.

[edit] OK, so technically it is a 600W supply, but that's only because they've boosted the output of the 5V rail. Thing is, anything above approx. 20A is fine for the 5V; it's the 12V which is important for anything newer than a Pentium 2. [/edit]

Coming soon to a website-owned-by-a-bored-student near you: destruct-testing of an EBuyer superpricecheapo 600000000000W PSU (weight: 250g)...

that's not the power supply that's coming with it.  that picture was meant to show the case more than the power supply.

and if worst comes to worst, when everything arrives, if i see the PS isn't up to spec, i'll run down to Frys and pay $120 for a better one.  no biggie.

[CP5670]

$900 difference?  the opterons and their 64fx counterparts are almost identical in price.  64FX 57 = slightly over $1000.  opteron 154 = slightly over $1000.

still not a believe in clocking for daily use.

We're talking about two different things here. The FX57 and 939 154 are identical in every way (2.8ghz, 1MB L2, revision E6, about $1100). I meant the difference between a FX57 and an 146 though. The FX57 has an $1100 MSRP, while the former is around $170 (I paid a bit more to get a guaranteed batch code), of which certain batches can overclock to 3ghz easily. Even the worst 146 steppings (the CABGEs or "cabbages" ) can do 2.6-2.7ghz.

If you are paying less than £50 ($80?) for a power supply 'rated at 480W', you are about to suffer disappointment. Don't look at the power rating; look at the maximum current it can deliver (that's sustained current, not peak current) on each rail. Anything less than 30A on the positive 12V rail is too weak for a gaming system.

Although I agree that this power supply is a complete POS ("600W" is a sad joke ), a sustained 30A on a 12V line is probably not needed in most cases if it's a high quality unit otherwise. There is one guy on the AT forums with the same unit as me (28A on 12V) and has a 7800GTX SLI setup on it.

[Stealth]

tell you what.  tell me what processor to get, that with BASIC overclocking i can match the FX57 in all aspects, and i'll take your word for it and get it

[CP5670]

It depends on what you call "basic" overclocking. I would say your best bet of getting that speed with a significantly cheaper processor is with one of a few particular Opteron 146 or 148 batches, but that involves a fairly large overclock percentage-wise, and you can only get a guaranteed batch number if you order off ebay (like I did) or buy at a retail store (where you can see the numbers on the CPUs through the boxes). There are some 3200s, 3700s and 4000s that can hit the speed, but it's not that common with those.

As for the batch codes, I did a fair bit of research on them last week and this seems to be the trend on 146s on good air cooling, although the other Opteron models with the same codes should perform similarly:
CABNE 0528GPMW : the absolute best, rebadged FX57s, can hit 3ghz on stock voltage and usually about 3.2ghz maximum (almost impossible to find now)
CABYE 0540FPBW and any other CABNE except for CABNE 0540s : still very good, about 2.8-2.9ghz on stock volts and max out at 3.0-3.1ghz
CABYE 0540FPAW and CABYE 0540FPMW : max out at about the same levels as above, but require a bit more voltage; I got an FPAW
any CABGE : not that good relatively speaking, only get to about 2.4 on stock voltage and 2.7 maximum, these are known as cabbages
any CAB2E : quite variable, can be as good as any of the above, rather hit or miss

If you don't want to bother with that, 2.6ghz (FX55 speed) is probably a more realistic target, which can generally be achieved by even the crappier Opteron batches and most normal A64s. In general, the Opterons on average seem to overclock better than A64s. Note that all the Opterons have 1MB of cache, so they equal the FXs in that respect, but out of the 939-pin A64s, only the 3700 and 4000 have that.

Also, one thing to keep in mind the older Asus nforce4 boards are all mediocre HT overclockers. The new A8N32 board should in theory be very good with the 8-phase power regulation, but not too many people have it yet and there isn't a whole lot of information on how well it does.

[Stealth]

that's the board i have. heh.

[Stealth]

Your computer is good.....almost as good as mine

For one time in my life i decided to go all out on a computer.

AMD X2 4400+ @ 2.72 Ghz, 233 Bus speed 2k HT
2 GB PC 5400 RAM
BFG GeForce 7800GT @ 633 mhz, 256 mb
DFI board, SLI-D UT
Antec 680w PSU
2x RAID 5 120 gb hdd

These are my optimal settings on stock frequencies. The 4400+ cooler is one of the best I have ever used, and its only stock!

BTW dont get the XFX 7800, yes it is cheaper but you get what you pay for. Read all the reviews and compare the benchmarks. You will see what I mean. I would get BFG, ASUS, or LEdtek.

still a toss up which one's better... i beat you in video card, hard drives, etc.

EDIT:  doesn't RAID 5 require a min. of 3 drives?  you're pulling it off with two?  you sure you're not just mirroring or striping? (0 or 1 level)

[Descenterace]

RAID5 does indeed require a minimum of 3 drives. However, I suspect that in this instance those are drives marketed as 'suitable for RAID5', which is a part of the name.

On the subject of RAID5, I'm thinking of buying a trio of 500GB disks with a RAID card just so I can claim a terabyte of RAID5'd space at the next LAN party... shame I don't have that kind of money, really.

[ChronoReverse]

Hell, 2.6GHz can be done by my "mere" Athlon64 3000+

At this moment I'd go for the 146 for sure.



My 350W Enermax PSU can also sustain 26A on the 12V rail.  But don't ever skimp on the power supply.  It's guaranteed to bite you in the ass later.  That's why I have at least a decent one.



BTW, if you're going to spend big, get the new Soundblaster XIFI card =D~